


when once we were home

by SerenePanic



Series: VLD Angst Week 2017 [7]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-10-10 15:08:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10440561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SerenePanic/pseuds/SerenePanic
Summary: Back on Earth, beneath a sky of stars, there is a woman, missing her son.





	

**Author's Note:**

> look at this for once the title is something I just made up and didn't pull out of poetry or music what a shock here
> 
> Part of VLD Angst Week.
> 
> March 25th: Family/Background.
> 
> (Yeah, I didn't do yesterday. I know.)

It’s been ten years.

_Ten awful, heartbroken, long years._

Lance has been gone for ten years. It would be his birthday, today—he should be turning 27. An adult. He should be grown up, but still teasing his siblings—the youngest was 13, now, trying to pretend she was all grown up, living in the shadow of a brother she couldn’t remember.

They all were, whether they knew it or not. Even though the first few years had passed, and it had been a decade—you were his _mother_ you could _never_ forget.

You missed him. It was very simple. You would never breathe a word of this to anyone—not the older ones, who were grown and married with children who only knew of their uncle from old photographs, not to your husband, and certainly not to any of the ones who were still children. Child was a relative term, of course—only two of them were younger than Lance had been.

(Of course, Lance had still been a child, too. He’d been _sixteen_ he should have been sneaking around, dating behind your back, making stupid mistakes that could be fixed—not been getting killed.)

You missed him. You forgot things, slowly—how it felt to hug him, how he sounded when he was completely serious, what his favorite color was, the name of that song he used to sing just to irritate you—but not everything. You never forgot what his face looked like when he smiled, or how his laugh sounded when he was startled into sheer enjoyment, or the uncertain way he’d stood before you at fourteen and a half, jaw set as still as he could keep it, and quietly told you he was bi.

(You never forgot that you were the first person he told, and that when you smiled softly at him, with understanding and such love and pride that he had been brave enough to come out even though you’d never have reacted poorly but he clearly didn’t know that and he still _did it_ , his whole face crumpled and he threw himself at you and hugged you for what felt like the longest moment in your life, but was still—in the end—too short.)

The first three years had been the hardest, because it felt like you were all just waiting for him to come home, to show up on your doorstep, tanned and too-skinny, smiling lopsidedly and opening his arms for a hug.

Eventually, though, the youngest ones forgot. They remembered he existed, and they knew he had been loved and they missed him, but for the youngest, who were barely older than infants when he left, he was mostly just a shadow, a spectre hanging over them. A warning to be careful.

( _Don’t break your mother’s heart the way Lance broke it_ , they are warned. You know, and you hate that they’re growing up like this, but if you lost any more of them—you don’t know how many more times your heart can shatter before you can’t even pretend you’re okay.)

It’s been ten years, and you still miss your son like the day he left for the Garrison, like the day you were told he had been killed, like you have every day for the past ten years and will likely do until the day you yourself die.

(You were his mother. All you ever wanted for him was to see him grow up and be happy and find whatever it was he was searching for that he couldn’t find here on Earth. All you wish, now, is that you could have hugged him one more time the last time you saw him.)

You love your other children. You don’t ever want anyone to doubt that. You would move the earth and skies for them, if you could—but the ones who remember Lance and remember him well also remember he was your favorite, for all that he never realized it. You would have taken him to the stars and sat there with him, if you could have. But he’s gone, and you know he will never come back, and your children deserve better than an absent, eternally grieving mother. So you pull yourself together, every morning, and you force yourself to forget the missing son.

(You only remember at night, when you dream of your son, among the stars, laughing, with galaxies in his eyes and the universe at his feet.)

You endure.

(And then, one day, one miraculous and incredible day, there’s a knock at the door, and your youngest calls you down because she doesn’t know who it is, and you go and you almost don’t recognize the man standing there—but then he looks at you and smiles and is startled into laughing and you never, _never forgot that laugh_ and you scream and before you know it your boy is safe, home, in your arms, where he’s always belonged, and he’s smiling and laughing and crying, a little, but so are you and there will be time to learn where he’s been and where those scars came from and where he went and why he never came back—but for now, he’s here and he’s home and he laughs like he used to and when you breathe, for the first time in ten years, your chest is light.)


End file.
